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Charles G. Cogan

Chuck Cogan is a historian and an associate of the Belfer Center's International Security Program. Cogan's articles and reviews have appeared in French Politics and Society, Défense Nationale, the Harvard French Review, and other publications. His book French Negotiating Behavior: Dealing with "La Grande Nation" was published by the United States Institute of Peace Press in December 2003. A French-language version, with an update, is entitled, Diplomatie à la française and was published by Éditions Jacob-Duvernet in September 2005 with a preface by Hubert Védrine. In recognition of the latter work, Dr. Cogan was awarded the Prix Ernest Lémonon of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences of the Institut de France.

Dr. Cogan's latest book, forthcoming in the summer 2015, is The Good the Bad and the Far-Out: Poems and Aphorisms Part 1. Like his previous book, Digital is the New Third Age: Adventures in the Blogosphere (2013), it was published by CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform and is available on Kindle. The latter book is a collection of his blog posts that have appeared on the Huffington Post as well as on the International Security Program website.

"The remark (and others) demonstrated not only that the Republican Party had allowed to be nominated a man lacking the usual dignity expected in an American presidential candidate; but also, that American public discourse had developed a coarseness over the recent decades that is a disturbing development to those who have a sense of what American history is all about."

"...[I]f the U.S. had taken charge of the skies over Syria at that time, it would have made it more difficult for Vladimir Putin to throw his air force into the mix later on and thereby outwit his American counterpart."

"Apart from the issue of the harm done to national security by this case, it is important to point out the unintended consequences of giving Snowden a pardon. Present and past CIA employees could regard such an action as a softening of standards and as an invitation to transgress."

"The time is 1940 when the affable Hoosier didn't even take part in the presidential primaries but nevertheless became the party's upstart candidate and gave Franklin Roosevelt a good run for his money before succumbing to the all-knowing smile of his patrician opponent, in an era in our history when a patrician candidate was taken as a matter of course, in contrast to today when coarseness seems to have phagocyted everything."

"Barack Obama has an elegance of speech which takes us back to FDR and JFK. But unlike LBJ, who was rather repugnant to Eastern Seaboard eyes and ears, he doesn't know how to move in the distinctly American legislative arena."

"He organized a referendum that didn't have to be held; its unexpected outcome has toppled him out of power; and he is responsible for a downturn of British credibility on the world scene. One is left with the question: how could one man have so screwed up the future of his country?"

"For years economists have urged on the French a greater flexibility in labor market legislation, which in shorthand means making it easier to hire and fire workers and thus get the economy going....The French authorities proceeded to ram the new law through the Assembly under the threat of a vote of no-confidence in the government...The French Left retaliated by launching a strike by garbagemen..."

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